SQL Error: ORA-00942 table or view does not exist

Because this post is the top one found on stackoverflow when searching for “ORA-00942: table or view does not exist insert”, I want to mention another possible cause of this error (at least in Oracle 12c): a table uses a sequence to set a default value and the user executing the insert query does not have select privilege on the sequence. This was my problem and it took me an unnecessarily long time to figure it out.

To reproduce the problem, execute the following SQL as user1:

create sequence seq_customer_id;

create table customer (
c_id number(10) default seq_customer_id.nextval primary key,
name varchar(100) not null,
surname varchar(100) not null
);

grant select, insert, update, delete on customer to user2;

Then, execute this insert statement as user2:

insert into user1.customer (name,surname) values ('michael','jackson');

The result will be “ORA-00942: table or view does not exist” even though user2 does have insert and select privileges on user1.customer table and is correctly prefixing the table with the schema owner name. To avoid the problem, you must grant select privilege on the sequence:

grant select on seq_customer_id to user2;

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